


Sorry I'm Late, But You Forgot I Was Coming

by Sandalaris



Series: the white rabbit's pocketwatch [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 13:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10641285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandalaris/pseuds/Sandalaris
Summary: An escape, a night in the woods, and a chance meeting.An AU where Belle escaped the hospital just days before Emma's arrival.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My thoughts on the curse are this: The curse brings people back together, only in ways that they can't stay that way.

They keep leaving her window open, letting in the corridor light that stab her eyes. She has to spit her bits of pills in shadows, away from the face of the still ticking clock and it's ever changing truths. Betray her once...

Her mind is clearer now, she knows this. Enough to know that it's wrong; she never asked to be here. 

Needs to be, something whispers to her, she's not right. Needs help. Mad. Dangerous. 

_He doesn't want you._

She pushes those thoughts away. They come from the outside, not her. They aren't her's and she wants them gone. Can ignore them, now that the fog in her veins is gone and the weight of synthetic chemicals is seeping into the concrete floor instead of the broken pieces of her mind. 

Tried it their way, didn't work. They had their chance.

She grits her teeth, counts the seconds between the guard's round. Only the one today. Doesn't know why, doesn't care. 

Tick-tock.

The light is cut, guard walking in front of it. He doesn't even look at her. Not important enough, curled on the corner of her raised pallet. 

She counts to ten slowly, waiting for the steps to stop their echoing in her head. They grow louder when he's gone, rattling around her skull until she shakes them into settling. 

Then the nurse comes, with her cart of pills and poison, unlocking each door with a heavy clang and locking it with the same until she gets to her's.

She's been so good. Took her pills and hasn't fought. No need for the guards to come and hold her down, no need for needles. 

"Alright, miss," the nurse says. Same thing over and over, same words, same movement. The nurse has lost her tock, and she suddenly pities her. 

The nurse steps forward, pausing only a moment when she's not in the same back corner as always. 

"Needed a change of view?" 

The nurse is trying to be kind, and she smiles, closed lip and sweet with big eyes. That used to work, she thinks. But the nurse's eyes are cold, always cold.

"Time for your meds." 

The cup is held out to her, closer than she usually is. She reaches for them, going just a step further until she's grasping fingers and pulling. She's not strong, used to be, before they stole that from her. 

But she can push, pulling the nurse to her while pushing her own body forward. Knocks the nurse to the side, watching her head hit the side of her bed. Snatching the keys from her belt.

Then she's up and moving, slipping through the door and locking it behind her and taking the keys.

A giddy giggle escapes, and she lets them slip free, lets them lead her down the hall, not even pausing to shush the deceitful clock.

She comes by a desk, grabs up the sweater on the edge, throwing it over the immodest gown they put her in. Then she's out the door and up the steps.

-

It had been bright at the top, harsh but steady and she had blinked past the light and walked past the people. 

To outside, where the sun shone down on her head and seeped into her skin. Through her pores, filling her up and letting her glow like magic in her blood. 

Past people and shops and everything is familiar while nothing is right. Objects and things whose names come too late, until the cement paths end. No one stops her. No one cares. 

She walks until grass in under her toes and the air taste sweet. Trees that are too short all around her while leaves and sticks prickles the bottoms of her feet and still she walks. Walks and turns until she's not sure on the way back. 

Time is a tricky, turning the sky dark when she wasn't prepared. Wasn't ready. No place to sleep, no place to hide. Seeping in and playing tricks on her eyes. 

She walks until her legs ache and her body shakes, and then she lays herself down and sleeps.

-

Morning comes, light in her eyes. Different. Clean.

More walking, more searching. Freedom taste soft and scary, the opposite of the meds the nurse gave her. 

She finds a street, houses all the wrong size. Too big, too small, too close. Princes and paupers all mixed up. 

It's too hot in the twilight, body shivering and sweating while her stomach rebels. Her last meal comes up, into the neatly shaped bushes beside her. It's poison and she's glad it's gone. 

Her legs are bare, chilled from lack of covering in a way the rest of her body isn't and her mind feels like it's being pressed against from the outside. She wants to cry, call for Mother and Papa but she hasn't either. She did once, but she's forgotten. Or maybe they did. 

Lost little girl all alone. Can't follow the wind's secrets to find her way home. Need a spell for that. He would know one, but it's all a fairy-tale and she wants to get better. Needs to. Feels it in the pressure to go back, to take her meds and be a good little girl so the queen will be pleased. 

She closes her eyes, shakes her head until her checks burn with cold and her jumbled thoughts fade into the faintest of whispers.

Dangerous to think such things. Locked her away. _It's for your own good._

It came from inside though, where all real things come from. And she needs, she needs... she needs to get better. 

Decision made, she opens her eyes once more, startled to find a man before her. 

Brown eyes study her, too deep and too sharp. All knowing, it's a gift of his. But the mirror is all distorted, giggles ringing in here ears that aren't hers. 

He's dressed oddly. Expensive and proper. Cane in one hand and with hair that is straight and smooth even with the wind tugging on strands. 

_Trying to make it right._

Behind him there's a pink house, one of the too small ones that are worth more than they should be. With colorful windows all painted with pictures. She likes the windows, she decides. Telling a story she can't quite read but wants too. 

"Are you going to stand there all morning?" 

His voice is all wrong, not what she expects. Missing words that float just out of sight, but clipped just right. She knows, in the same what she knows that time is on it's way back and that magic isn't real but wants to be. 

She realizes she's blocking his path. Standing still where the street meets the steps to his front door. It's too small, supposed to be as tall as trees, enough to fight a cart through. But there are no carts. Not here. 

"I-I'm sorry," she stutters. Feels like the first words she's spoken in years, her voice rough with disuse and no water for her pills. 

She takes a step back and the man looks at her feet. Too knowing gaze pauses there, travels up her body quickly before dropping back down. 

"Looking a bit lost, dearie?" 

Voice is oiled now, better but not. She giggles, high and broken until it fills the space between them in familiarity. 

"Not yet," she says, voice only cracking a little this time, "but give me time." 

Time time time. Broken time was stuck but it's getting free. Running around it's wheel once more but getting somewhere now. 

Wrong eyes study her. Not with interest. Intrigue. That's the word. Dangerous, she thinks, to have caught such a man's attention. 

"And what brings you to the neighborhood, my dear?" he asks with false smile. 

She tilts her head, considers the question. It was purple, she thinks, but its detached. A random thought unconnected and floating in and out of focus. 

"I don't know," she finally replies. 

"That's not wise," he says with an almost absent air, unimportant if it weren't for the way his eyes seem to take in every detail of her. "Even Storybrooke isn't safe to wander about by yourself." 

She shivers, smile fading and all her happiness draining away. She's lost, so lost. And lost little girls get hurt. Get snatched up and locked away in stone towers with flickering torchlight. 

Her gaze drops, staring down at her feet. She wiggles her toes, presses them against the sidewalk until she can feel the rubbing burn of hard cement against the tender skin on the underside. No dirt, no boots. No pieces of a non-existent past. 

"Perhaps," he says slowly, "I should call someone to take you back." 

"No!" 

Fear grips her, sudden and complete. And something new. Hot and bubbling in her chest. She shoves herself backwards, feeling fire rushing under her skin and in her ears, needs to get away. Before they come and take all her hard-earned clarity. 

"Calm yourself," he says with something akin to panic as she slips out of his reach. "I won't do so just yet." 

"You can't," she hisses, eyes narrowed. She shifts her weight, preparing to flee. He couldn't catch her. Not now. Or maybe he could. Tricky man, playing with her mind. 

He pauses, one hand raised in a weak attempt to reach for her, and he studies her. Studies her and studies her, face an unreadable mask, but something skitters in his eyes. 

"I'm on my way to the shop," he says at last. "Almost time to open. Perhaps- perhaps we can continue our conversation later." 

He says it like a question, but it not. No matter his unsurity, so new and so familiar at once. That wasn't a request. 

She opens her mouth to say no, to retreat into the shadows once more, but instead she finds agreeing, words reluctant. Not quite pulled from her, she thinks, but a close thing. 

Purple is such a lovely color.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the most broken on I have written for this series. It was written in stops and starts as I was figuring out exactly what I wanted with this thing.


End file.
